


lure you in the dark (my cold desire)

by Rainyhart



Category: DCU
Genre: Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Fear, Gaslighting, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27015658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainyhart/pseuds/Rainyhart
Summary: Slade missed the thrill of hunting. It wasn't necessarily for wildlife.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Slade Wilson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 45





	lure you in the dark (my cold desire)

**Author's Note:**

> entirely inspired by the tumblr whumptober challenge, but without the rules. would be _day five: "where do you think you're going?"_ with the prompts: _on the run_ and _failed escape_. strangely first time posting this pairing on this account and it feels like that should be illegal.

Dick snapped alert to the sound of his heart beating through his chest. It wasn’t, but the feeling alone was enough to get him scampering to his feet where they sank into the muddy forest floor beneath him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually rested, as the thicket of trees seemed to stretch on for miles and miles. It could have been two days ago, maybe a week, but he felt the exhausting ache in his bones just the same. 

_Crack._

Still, he had to keep going. The trek continued on without fail through the merciless switch of heat and early fall downpour. Because he didn’t have a _choice._ He swam across creeks, and calloused his hands climbing trees, and dragged himself through a blanket of twigs under the pale illumination of the moon because _he had to._

 _I’ll give you a generous start._ He remembered Slade saying at the time, and Dick hadn’t thought he was serious. _Two days. Start North, but make no stops. If I don’t find you in five days’ time….I’ll call it off._

 _...And if you do?_ Dick had asked.

 _If I do…._ Slade quirked his lip upward into a smirk, and Dick remembered the way the sight of it sent a nauseating shiver through him. _You’re going to wish I hadn’t._

_Snap._

Maybe he was going in circles. At the beginning Dick had tried to keep a system for his sanity, he wasn’t allowed to have any outside tools’ help, but after stripping dozens of tree bark off with his nails until they bled at the tips they became as useless as the head start Slade had offered him….like it was some kind of _gift._ The ground gave underneath him and Dick slipped, his right knee slamming a jagged boulder as the other hit the ground. Even with his hands halting the near face first assault into the tangle of sharp branches, a violently sharp pain erupted through his body, shooting outwards from the knee up to his shoulders and back down to the pits of his stomach again and again until his toes curled against the decaying leaves littered around him but he refused to scream. He _couldn’t…._

_Crack._

The sound wasn’t close but it was still loud, and Dick hobbled now as he moved through the cluster of moss covered trunks. His mind screamed to go faster, but his body only protested for release. As though it hadn’t slept for days, making the joints feel weighted and the shadows animated through anxiety ridden eyes. Or that his stomach would have eaten itself twice if it could by now, each night spent stopping only to throw up acidic bile as the trees groaned around him with the wind in darkness. There wasn’t time to take care of those things anymore. He had to run, he had to _go._

Surely Slade had to know that a normal human couldn’t go much more than seventy two hours without rest. Without food, or any proper hydration. He had to know these things, and the conclusion only terrified Dick more. Almost as much as giving up. Letting himself collapse to take in the scrapes and scratches the impact would bring, allowing his eyes to droop shut as his body would curl in on himself to drift and dream in the cool dirt with only the bugs to keep him company. Slade would find him there, unconscious but not untouchable, and Dick couldn’t imagine what he would decide to do with his body but at least it would be over. 

What happened next Dick thought was something that could only occur in something like a fairy tale. It started with a minor misstep on a slippery patch of mud, but it took him down quick, wiping his footing out from under him and rendering his balance useless as his back slammed the ground. For a moment everything went dark, but light slowly trickled in, dancing little patches of white that came with painful ringing in his ears, and Dick tried to convince himself they were the visions of the stars in the sky. The way to get up was slow, sitting up and rolling over to his knees where he let them ache a second before he tried to stand. He only managed to get one foot on the ground before he felt it, a searing ripple that unfurled itself to every external point on his body in waves like a throbbing ocean of lava, starting from his right shoulder. He didn’t have to look to see it, the bloodied tip of a bullet arrow pierced clear through his skin, his bone, and lodged itself there like its comfortable new home. 

Slade had _shot_ him. 

The scream came next, hoarse and ugly and desperate as anything but pained at the root of it, and the empty nothing surrounding Dick echoed it right back as he clutched at the wound desperately. Red seeped from the puncture at a steady flow as the pain dulled to numbness with each throb, turning what was left of his already grimy t-shirt into blood-stained ruins. He could hear his heartbeat again now, louder than before, and it pushed Dick to the little logical thought process that still remained. Everything ached but he miraculously rose to his feet, the adrenaline from the pain overworking enough for the moment that he could stumble forward with tears decorating his eyes. 

_Crunch._

It was becoming obvious that he had to run, but the more Dick gradually sped up his pace, his thighs…..his head... _the pounding_ ….his shoulder…. cried for mercy. The effort was ignored in favor of getting more distance as Dick slammed through bushes that yanked at his new weapon accessory and leapt through streams that dared to drag him down with them, but the pain remained throughout. In his head, between the tormented pulsate of every appendage he had came the chant of _run faster….faster….faster….faster_ and _not enough….not enough….not enough….not enough_ until he lost track of how long he had been running at all. For a brief moment Dick was reminded of how easy it had been the first two days, and the thought made him whimper. He had slept for both nights, only a few hours, but it was something. There had been more time. Plenty of time to stop for a drink of water, or to search for anything edible to keep his energy up. By now Dick could barely remember what it was like to walk, to feel comfortable and safe in his surroundings as opposed to the present where he felt he had eyes on him from every corner of the darkness that swallowed him. 

If the sun would only come up at least he could have the advantage of sight back on his side, but the night felt as eternal as his journey to end the chase and win the game Slade had signed his soul up for as entertainment, so Dick trekked on. Not quite at a run anymore, but it was enough, and he had found a steady pace that didn’t flood his body with warning signals until stupidly, mistakenly, he hopped a fallen branch into a pile of leaves and heard it before he felt it. ‘It’ being the dissonance of something solid snapping clear in two, and Dick screeched at the sky, and the ground, and the trees over the excruciating new pain that brought him to his knees within a second this time. 

A bear trap had gone off around his left ankle, and it tore relentlessly through both skin and bone alike until it hung lifelessly from the rest of his body, held together only by the rusty metal jaws it had become confined by. Even with this immediate knowledge, Dick felt next to nothing for the loss, and instead resorted to the next best strategy of escape as he slid onto his belly and pulled forwards at the elbows. The trap dragged with him miserably as the arrow in his shoulder pulsed more iron filled burgundy liquid, and Dick started to place bets on which body part would bleed him dry first when a twig cracked directly behind him. 

No. _NoNoNo._

“So disappointing.” The voice drawled, but Dick didn’t stop crawling…. _couldn’t stop._ “And with such a copious head start too.” 

In the distance, a crack of light peeked through the horizon and Slade’s words swam around in Dick’s head as he attempted to put them together. When they clicked, a swell of hope filled his chest, and he couldn’t help but blink out a few grateful tears over the realization. “I did it.” He breathed in disbelief, letting his body finally come to a halt. _Exhausted._ “I-....I did it!"

The smile that dared to pull at the chapped corners of his lips shrunk as quickly as it began when Slade started to laugh, and Dick blinked at the soul crushing sound that ripped him back to the unfair reality of Slade’s world in which Dick lived until Slade decided that he shouldn’t. Still, he dared to push for a sliver of a dream where he was right, so he spoke again, louder this time, more confident. “I won! You s-said five days….I counted every moon ....” He sounded desperate, “You _lost.”_

But Slade only laughed harder, and then Dick felt him press the bottom of his boot to his back, squishing him into the earth where he deemed he belonged. 

“Little bird….” Slade said, and Dick squeezed his eyes shut the moment he heard the defined click of a shotgun being loaded above him. The cold barrel tapped at the exposed skin of his neck, and it was then that Dick realized with an all consuming horror that Slade hadn’t counted his head start at all. “It’s only been three.”

**Author's Note:**

> https://rainyhart.tumblr.com/


End file.
